By Petulia Clarke, Staff Reporter
Kingston Technical High School students 'lyming' outside the compound yesterday. - Norman Grindley /Staff Photographer
PARENTS HIRED special caregivers, took their children with them to work, dropped them off at libraries or left them all alone at home yesterday, as they tried to find ways to accommodate students displaced by yesterday's islandwide strike by teachers.
Throughout downtown Kingston, Half-Way Tree, Barbican, Constant Spring, Papine, St. Andrew and Portmore, St. Catherine, children were seen tagging along with working parents or wandering plazas by themselves most with the happiest of smiles on their faces.
In the Papine market, Shelly-Ann Robinson, a worker in the canteen, said that she would be keeping her son, Kemore, with her for the two days that he would not be attending school.
"Today he has some bookwork to do, and I will find something for him to do tomorrow,' she said. "He's on the evening shift (at New Providence Primary) so he's here with me most mornings so it wasn't really a problem. He'll just be spending more hours, but he won't be playing like he hopes; he'll be studying."
In other sections of the market, children were seen helping their mothers to sell goods, and others had come out shopping with parents and other siblings.
In the malls along Constant Spring Road, students in uniform and casual clothes packed fast food joints, stores and game shops, most in groups and others window-shopping.
Others crammed into the Tom Redcam Library, where library assistants were kept busy helping the unusually heavy Monday morning traffic. "There's usually nobody here on a Monday morning, but parents have been dropping the children off all morning," library assistant, Kimray Richards, said. He said that they were surprised at the number of children who came and had no time to plan any activities apart from the usual reading.
Upstairs in the Junior Library, 13-year-old Jamaica College student, Basil McGregor, said that his parents had to work but he had informed them that if there was no school he'd be at the library for the day.
"They know where I am, and I really have a lot of studying to do," he said. "I went to school and turned back, but I can't just waste the day. Tomorrow I'll just come back here and finish some assignments."
Eleven-year-old Trishan Melbourne, a Gordon Town All-Age student, said that she would be picked up in that afternoon by her working mother, who had warned her that it was "very important for GSAT students to spend the time studying and not idling".
She had travelled all the way from Temple Hall, St. Andrew, and planned to make the trip again today as she planned to spend Day Two of the strike at Tom Redcam again, catching up on studying.
In the Portmore Mall, game shop operators said that a few children had visited that morning, and more were expected later yesterday. The students who visited spent their time on virtual reality racetracks and elsewhere in cyberspace, burning their day in kiddie paradise. More excitement was evident at another packed computer store next door, another game shop that offered more virtual games, plus Internet and e-mail services.
Kingston mother Janice Parkes said she wasn't as lucky to have pre-arranged supervision for her nine-year-old son, and spent a huge part of yesterday morning trying to find someone who could stay with him for the day. "I got to work after midday, but my supervisor understood," she said.
The Jamaica Employers' Federation (JEF) said yesterday that a few companies had called in complaining about loss of production as their employees called in absent on Day One of the two-day strike.
Jacqueline Coke-Lloyd, JEF executive director, said yesterday that few calls had come in from employers whose schedules had been upset because their employees had not showed up for work.
This, as parents scurried to find alternative accommodations for their children as it became apparent that no classes would be held yesterday.
